The New York Timesis reporting that for the first time in more than a decade the battle over securing the border has shifted from Arizona to Texas. According to the story:

Now the Rio Grande Valley has displaced the Tucson enforcement zone as the hot spot, with makeshift rafts crossing the river in increasing numbers, high-speed car chases occurring along rural roads and a growing number of dead bodies turning up on ranchers’ land, according to local officials.

“There is just so much happening at the same time — it is overwhelming,” said Benny Martinez, the chief deputy in the Sheriff’s Department of Brooks County, Tex., 70 miles north of the border, where smugglers have been dropping off carloads of immigrants who have made it past Border Patrol checkpoints.

This will surely have an impact on public policy in Texas, and not for the better. It will provide Rick Perry with a ready-made issue for his next political campaign, whatever it might be. We may see a renewed emphasis on sanctuary cities laws and other Arizona-style anti-immigrant legislation, and, of course, criticism of Obama for failing to do the impossible, which is to secure the border. The timing is bad for South Texas, which should be looking toward a bright future with the new UT Medical School and other advances in higher education.

AP Photo | Eric Gay

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Comments

Jon

Bill Clinton did send the U.S. Marines to patrol the Texas-Mexico border. But that effort was abandoned after the Ezequiel Hernandez shooting near Redford in 1997. So Obama does have the option of reviving the Clinton plan if he chose do to so (the looming irony being some on the right would freak out over the idea of Obama having Marines doing basically law enforcement duties on U.S. soil).

WUSRPH

I don’t know why you say the border cannot be sealed. All we have to do is import some retired East German experts who can show us how to build a real “wall”….Maybe our Double Cs in the U.S. Senate (Cruz-Cornyn) (or is that Double Sleaze) can add the necessary funding and authority to the immigration bill. Thank of it, Texas the new GDR!.

hooah

Indeed…..THAT worked out well, didn’t it? 😉

WUSRPH

Actaully, in terms of what the Wall was intended to do, it worked very well. It kept 99.9999% of the East Germans in East Germany for at least 28 years afer it was built. The problem we are supposed to have is keeping people out, not in. This means we would have to reverse their design to put the dogs and the mine fields on the outside of the wall rather than on the inside…but I am sure Cruz can get that all worked out okay.

Seal the borders, get the illegal aliens OUT and back to their home countries: learn English and reading the U.S. constitution and it’s amendments

WUSRPH

Of course, when people like Gov. Opps say the Constitution and its Amendments they kind of overlook the Supremacy Clause, the Elections Clause, the Commerce Clause and the 1st, 5th, 14th and 15th Amendments. He also says he doesn’t like the 16th and 17th either.

Folks at the blog, Perry vs the World seem to believe that recent events suggests that Perry is seeking reelection in 2014

anon-p

Invade Mexico. I’m serious.

We should have a Golan Heights style militarized buffer zone extending a least a hundred to two hundred miles across the border that we occupy and pacify.

We wipe out the drug lord operations there and let businesses come in and allow the maquiladoras to flourish inside the safe zone.

It’s win-win for us, Mexico, poor illegals (who wouldn’t be, inside Mexico), business. I don’t see how there’s a flaw in the plan.

Unwound

Oh yeah that’ll get a ton of public support and make it through congress.

dpcesq

In the short term this will be bad for the state and sentient beings who live here as morons like Perry and Cruz will use it to demagogue on immigration and rile up the “base”. In the long term it will be good for the state because the rhetoric will be so mean-spirited and vile (see comments from WUSRPH, JBB and anon-p) that it will help accelerate a transition that is starting. Texas is going to go where Virginia is now — from a reliably red state to one that is purple and competitive. It is just a question of how long it takes to get there. I was going to say 10 -12 years, but if the base gets ugly enough it could be six to eight. Look at how the state house district lines are changing. Places like rural west Texas are losing districts, and metro areas like Dallas, Austin, Houston and the Valley are gaining districts. Where is the population growth? Hispanic citizens. The R’s are masters at gerrymandering (have to give them credit where it is due) so they can slow this process down somewhat, but they can’t stop it. The big difference between Texas and other majority / minority states (NM, CA) is that the Hispanic population in Texas votes in much lower numbers . This kind of rhetoric could get them off their butts and into the voting booth.
All these numbers are much lower than when W was President. Where was the outrage then?

anon-p

There’s nothing mean-spirited or vile about my proposal. It’s people like you that are mean-spirited and vile. You have no intention of helping Mexico, or the overwhelming low-skilled, poor immigrants that are fleeing it.

All you are interested in is vote gathering.

You have no plan to address the thoroughly corrupt and unsafe border area. You have no plan to avoid the inevitable racial tension that will arise when the lower middle class whites are pushed into higher tax brackets due to being displaced by lower class Hispanics. You have no plan to address the violence across the border due to drug lord control of the area.

At least adorn your demogoguery with a fig leaf of a proposed solution.

dpcesq

I think letting low skilled, poor immigrants come to this country is the best help we can give them. They are doing the same thing my ancestors did when they got off the boat from Ireland 125 years ago (and were called names just as ugly by the people who were already here).
If your concern is drug cartel violence at the border, the first thing I would do is legalize pot. Then the suppliers will go from cartel lords to reputable businessmen. Just like alcohol suppliers changed from Al Capone to the Seagrams family after Prohibition was repealed. Pot is 90% of their business.
I don’t understand your point about racial tensions. If someone is pushed into a higher tax bracket, then that means he is making more money. Why would he be mad at the people who you say will do that to him?
If you think the R’s will help the economic prospects of unskilled white labor, then you must be smoking lots of that stuff coming across the border. How did they do under W? How are they doing in Texas under Perry?

anon-p

European immigration worked because it was slower and they assimilated much better. Even European immigration had breaks and timeouts put on it a hundred years ago.

Hispanic immigration has been far more rapid and overwhelming and is not comparable. Mexico has sent more immigrants to the United States than any other nation. They have sent more immigrants in the last three decades than England, Germany, and Italy have in the past four centuries. Non-European immigration has now exceeded European immigration.

Legalizing illicit substances will not cause drug lords to become honest businessmen. Some small timers at the bottom will, but the biggest will turn to other illicit activities, because they pay. If they had an inclination to honest business, they would have already done so. However, public use of marijuana will certainly go up, as it did in the 70’s with the first wave of legalizations, and as alcohol use did following Prohibition repeal. I’m not looking forward to more pot-high drivers on the road, and pot-smoking breaks for my coworkers.

With regard to racial tension, the influx of poor, low-skilled Hispanics is causing a new lower class to form. By necessity, a majority of whites will be pushed into upper brackets, and not necessarily because their standard of living has improved objectively. The lower class Hispanics will require significantly more health care and education spending, and they aren’t going to pay for it themselves with their economic activity under the current tax structure.

It doesn’t matter if you have an opinion of whether that development is right or wrong, it just matters that it will happen, and there is no plan to manage the friction and tension that will come when the “new” middle and upper class is expected to fund the new lower class when they won’t feel like they’re in the upper class at all.

I actually agree with many who say the United States has an obligation to help the poor and underprivileged of our near neighbors, or at least the Western hemisphere. But just mass importing them without a clearly thought out plan under the assumption that it’s analogous to the European immigration of yesteryear is delusional. Even the poor Hispanic illegal immigrants who are here won’t appreciate the new competition for the already low-paying jobs they mostly occupy right now.

WUSRPH

European immigration at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was anything but “slower”….In only a couple of decardes we had to absorb so many new people that about 35% of the population was “foreign born”……

anon-p

Your numbers are wrong. The high water mark of foreign born was nearly 15% in 1890. It took decades of solid European immigration to get there, and it was followed by a lock down with quotas on allowed immigration in order to allow for the melting pot to work. Additionally, severe non-European immigration restriction was put in place even during that huge wave.

As of 2010, we’re currently at nearly 13% foreign born and climbing rapidly with no end or slow down in sight. Nearly one in three of those entered the country in the last ten years, and more than half are non-citizens.
cf: http://www.census.gov/how/infographics/foreign_born.html

Mexico, just as various European nations over a hundred years ago, is using us a relief valve for their poor.

WUSRPH

Thanks for corecting me….I should have checked my numbers, which
I usually try to do….My ancestors just felt like they were being overun…much as the local Native Americans must have felt when they showed up on the Ark and the Dove. PS And it is just not Mexicans…A friend of mine who retired from the Border Patrol says one of the largest new groups is from Brazil…..Seems the tide is working its way down Central and South America….We can expect Terra del Fuegoians any time now.

WUSRPH

However, I think you may be a little off in suggesting that European immigration was so spread out over a number of years as not to be that much of an impact. I did some figure checking and found that 40 million arrived from 1836 to 1914 BUT THAT 8.8 million (more than 20 percent) arrived in the years 1900 to 1910….with the hgh point being 1,214,348 in 1907. In fact they were coming in so fast that they were increasing the U.S.’s total population by 1% PER YEAR. In comparison, the record growth of over 10 million in the last decade or so represented only a 0.3% per year increase in our current population. The flood was only stopped by two events—the First World War which broke out in Aug. of 1914 and the passage of strong immigration laws in 1921 with a strict quota system (that was particualrly aimed at slowing the influx from Southern and Eastern Europe.) So, they were not so spread out as you suggest and well could have appeared to be real flood to many.

anon-p

Well, it was far more geographically concentrated in the northeast than our recent Hispanic immigration has been.

But yes, perhaps that wave was analogous to our recent Hispanic immigration with regards to total foreigners present percentage.

One thing they had that we may not is a lot of “visitors” who went back home after a short period of time. Our immigrants have a more permanent status, I suspect.

Additionally, the tax-supported social benefits structure then was miniscule compared to today’s behemoth.

John Bernard Books

“European immigration worked because it was slower and they assimilated much better” ever heard of France or UK where there is zero zip nada assimilation? didn’t think so….

WUSRPH

A little sarcasim is not vile in my book…..plus comparing me to JBB is more than vile..but each to his own…..

John Bernard Books

I bet it made you feel important for about a minute……made your day….yw.

John Bernard Books

but JBB didn’t Jesus tell us to feed the poor?….yes but he didn’t say do it by giving free ‘obamaphones’ or using that taxpayer money to buy votes that was Woodrow, Franklin, and Lyndon.

Bhoonda Bandar

Spen the money on a fence instead of housing the illegals .Just build a fence. This is a no brainer . How stupid can you be.

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